On Tuesday, all of the missile alert crews at all three U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile bases will consist of women.

The female missile officers at Malmstrom, Minot and F.E. Warren Air Force Bases will be joined in the field by all-female B-52 aircrews from Minot and Barksdale AFBs.

Female operators from the 625th Strategic Operations Squadron at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska are also participating. The 625th provides secondary Minuteman III launch capability through the Airborne Launch Control System, which is housed aboard the Navy's E-6B aircraft and a backup to Minuteman launch control centers.

It's a first for the Air Force.

The Malmstrom officers will be wearing special patches that have a likeness of Rosie the Riveter and read "We put the 'miss' in missileer."

Second Lt. Alexandra Rea, deputy crew commander, and 1st Lt. Elizabeth Guidara, crew commander, will be in the missile field Tuesday.

"I"m really excited," Rea said. "It's awesome to think about how far we've come as an Air Force and a country."

"We're continuing on what other women have done," Guidara said.

It's also a reminder "not to be afraid to take risks," Guidara said. She was working as a paralegal before she decided to join the Air Force and was commissioned through the Officer Training School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama.

"The fact that we can look across our pre-departure briefing room and see a woman sitting in every seat, for every combat crew going out on nuclear alert, is in itself significant, not because Team Malmstrom is fielding an all-women alert force, but because we have enough women filling combat leadership roles to take alert for the entire wing," said Col. Tom Wilcox, 341st Missile Wing commander. "It wasn't always this way, and we have further to go, but the Air Force has made great strides to build a force representative of the nation we serve."

The patch female missileers are wearing as the Air Force mans the missile fields with all-female crews Tuesday.

Photo Credit: Air Force photo/Airman Collin Schmidt

In the 1970s, women were assigned to missile wings, but largely in support functions. In 1978, women were becoming missile maintenance officers and training as missile crew officers on the Titan missile system.

Retired Col. Patricia Fornes and Airman 1st Class Tina Ponzer were the first enlisted and officer women to perform Titan II alerts at the 381st Strategic Missile Wing at McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas, according to the Air Force and press reports.

Titan missiles had four-person crews in large, three-level underground bunkers. There crews included two officers and two enlisted airmen. The Minuteman capsules are 125 square feet with a shared bathroom on one end and a small bed on the other.

At the time, the Minuteman missile crews were two male officers. Strategic Air Command, which then controlled all ICBM units, worried about privacy, morality, spouse objections and crew morale, according to Air Force documents.

In 1980, Strategic Air Command conducted a survey of 475 male Minuteman crewmembers and 281 of their wives.

The results found that 40 percent of the missile crewmen and 67 percent of their wives opposed women as part of the Minuteman crew force.

One of the first women to graduate from missile crew training was Deborah Jermunson of Brady.

She was later selected as a team member for the 1985 Strategic Air Command study examining women on missile launch crews. Jermunson "brought her Titan missile experience and airborne command and control expertise and was the first operationally ready female Titan crew commander," according to the 1985 document.

The study found that spouses had concerns about male-female crews, and the Air Force study team concluded "that introducing additional stress into an already demanding missile crew environment was not considered prudent."

Second Lt. Alexandra Rea, left, and 1st Lt. Elizabeth Guidara in the missile procedures trainer at Malmstrom Air Force Base on Monday.

Photo Credit: Air Force photo/Airman Collin Schmidt

That study recommended introducing all-female missile crews for Minuteman and Peacekeeper missile systems, which was implemented later that year.

The Air Force study team also worried about the flow of female officers into the missile crew career field and wasn't confident that enough female officers would volunteer to be missileers, which would affect the ability to field all-female missile crew teams.

In 1988, the Air Force started a trial of mixed crews on alert with one male and one female at Whiteman AFB in Missouri and Malmstrom.

According to a New York Times report, there were no reports of sexual misconduct among the mixed crews and in late 1988, the Air Force made the mixed missile crews permanent.

First Lt. Dominique Gray and 1st Lt. Jennifer Bishop are glad to be part of the all-female missile crews manning ICBMs on Tuesday.

"It's very exciting to be part of history," Bishop said.

She marked her second year at Malmstrom and 15th year in the Air Force on Monday. She was previously an enlisted airman.

Gray said finding out that the all-female effort included bombers and other parts of Air Force Global Strike Command was "that much more exciting. It's cool to be a part of history."

Bishop said that in the early missile days, women weren't allowed to serve as operators. Fast-forward to today when there's enough female missile operators and bomber aircrews to have those in the field be all women for an alert shift.

"I don't personally think about it until moments like this," Gray said. "We have come a long way."

Lt. Col. Kristen Nemish is the 10th Missile Squadron commander and will be in the field as a missile crew commander on Tuesday.

She's been in the Air Force for 17 years.

"When I think back to when I was a second lieutenant, we didn't even have the ability to do this, there weren't enough of us," Nemish said. "I'm honored to do this."

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